How to include single quotes in bash folder expansion?

Question

Edited*

I have the following definitions in my bash script:

DATE_SUFIX=$(date +%F_%H-%M-%S)
NAME="MyBackup_"
FILE_NAME=$NAME$DATE_SUFIX
TMP_DIR="/tmp/"
TMP_BKP=$TMP_DIR$NOME_ARQ"/"
TAR_CMD="tar czPf "

and I create a dir list like this:

FOLDER_LIST[0]="/opt"
FOLDER_LIST[1]="/etc/apache2/sites-available"
FOLDER_LIST[2]="/home/user"

Then I iterate this list with this loop:

mkdir $TMP_BKP
for ix in ${!FOLDER_LIST[*]}
do
    CMD=$TAR_CMD$TMP_BKP$(basename ${FOLDER_LIST[$ix]})".tar.gz "${FOLDER_LIST[$ix]}"/* "$EXCLUDE
    echo $CMD
done

I also have some code to generate the $EXCLUDE part. I does it the same way. But the relevant part of code for this question is that "${FOLDER_LIST[$ix]}"/* part in CMD expands to:

"/home/user/mybackupfolder/foo /home/user/mybackupfolder/bar ..."

the problem is that one of the expanded sub-folders has spaces in it, generating:

"/home/user/mybackupfolder/foo /home/user/mybackupfolder/bar /home/user/mybackupfolder/my spaced dir"

and that breaks the following operations. How can I make it expand to this? -

"'/home/user/mybackupfolder/foo' '/home/user/mybackupfolder/bar' '/home/user/mybackupfolder/my spaced dir'"

Answer 1

(Answer culled from comment thread)

This seems to be a case where quotes are either missing or wrongly applied. You cannot put quotes into a string and have the shell to interpret the result as a quoted string.

Please could I suggest that you read BashFAQ #50: I'm trying to put a command in a variable, but the complex cases always fail! and see if that helps.